A fresh bid to legalise assisted dying was defeated in the House of Commons today as efforts to revive a controversial Bill fell at the first major hurdle.
MPs voted by 286 to 270, majority 16, to reject the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill at its Second Reading.
There were cheers and a shout of ‘good’ as the result was announced in the chamber, while some MPs could be seen hugging and pumping their fists as the Bill fell.
It followed a passionate four-and-a-half hour debate in the Commons on Friday between supporters and opponents of assisted dying.
Many MPs spoke emotionally about their own personal experiences and the experiences of their dying loved ones.
The Bill had aimed to allow terminally ill adults in England and Wales with fewer than six months to live to apply for an assisted death.
It had been reintroduced by Labour MP Lauren Edwards despite its failure in the last parliamentary session when – although it passed two votes in the Commons – it fell in the Lords.
MPs voted by 286 to 270, majority 16, to reject the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill at its Second Reading
It followed a passionate debate in the Commons on Friday between supporters and opponents of assisted dying, with many speaking emotionally about their personal experiences
Ms Edwards re-introduced the Bill to the Commons after taking over from its previous sponsor, Kim Leadbeater.
During Friday’s debate, she urged her fellow MPs to send the near-identical Bill back to the Lords ‘so that they can finish what they started’ in scrutinising the legislation.
But critics have argued the ‘flawed’ Bill is ‘unsafe’ and told the Commons not to return it to the Lords unamended.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch warned against trying to ‘ram’ through the ‘badly drafted’ legislation.
‘It’s rushed, it’s badly drafted – and I say this as someone who is not, in principle, opposed to assisted suicide,’ she said. ‘I think we need to be very careful about what we’re doing.
‘I don’t think our NHS is ready and I think this should be something that the Government does thoughtfully, not a private members’ Bill, let alone one which has failed before and which they’re trying to ram through with government numbers.
‘I think that’s wrong.’
Ms Edwards on Friday said MPs were being asked to consider ‘who ultimately decides the laws that govern our nations’ after the unelected Lords blocked the Bill last time round.
Opening the Second Reading debate, she said: ‘We can and we must improve both palliative care and support assisted dying.
‘We must grasp that opportunity in front of us to create a holistic end of life care system that will deliver choice and dignity for every single one of our constituents.’
She said that, because of the four-year implementation period in the Bill, assisted dying would not be available across the two nations until 2031 at the earliest.
‘We owe it to the people that we represent to find a resolution to this issue, one way or the other, within this Parliament,’ the Labour MP for Rochester and Strood added.
Dame Karen Bradley, a Conservative former minister, said previous supporters of the Bill should feel ‘no shame’ in opposing the draft new law.
‘You do not have to repudiate the vote you cast last time in order to vote differently today,’ she said.
‘You do not have to decide that assisted dying can never be right. You do not have to abandon the compassion that led you to support the principle.
‘You need only ask whether this Bill, in this form, on the evidence before us now today, is safe enough for Parliament to force into law.
‘That is today’s test and there is no shame whatsoever in concluding that the answer to a different question is different, indeed, there will be something profoundly wrong with a Parliament in which members felt bound by an earlier vote, regardless of everything they’d learned since.’
Dr Zubir Ahmed, a cancer surgeon and former health minister, told the Commons that the social and palliative care system ‘simply is not ready’ for assisted dying, adding that there can often be uncertainty in a doctor’s prognosis for terminally ill patients.
He told the chamber: ‘I have to be honest with you. When I am asked to prognosticate as to whether someone has six months to live or not, I am as often wrong as I am right.’
Ashley Dalton, another Labour former health minister, told the Commons that she herself has stage four metastatic breast cancer, which is incurable.
She said her cancer ‘is stable’ but warned she was unsure for how long drugs would continue to work.
Ms Dalton said: ‘Palliative care professionals and oncologists tell me that, whilst they can more or less give me an indication of when I’ll die when I’m a few days or weeks off, anything beyond that is the flip of a coin.
‘The six-month prognosis in this Bill is something no one can ever be really sure of.’
The Bill had been reintroduced by Labour MP Lauren Edwards despite its failure in the last parliamentary session when – although it passed two votes in the Commons – it fell in the Lords
Campaigners in favour of assisted dying demonstrated in front of the Houses of Parliament this morning
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch warned against trying to ‘ram’ through the ‘badly drafted’ legislation.
Fellow Labour MP Claire Hazelgrove, a supporter of the Bill, spoke publicly for the first time about her mother’s decision to bring her late-stage terminal illness to an end ‘on her terms’.
She said the ‘harmful status quo’ meant her mother died alone in October last year, after living with a rare blood cancer for half her life and argued ‘not all pain can be palliated’.
‘For Mum, it wasn’t a choice of life or death. It was a question of what kind of death she would have,’ she told the Commons. ‘She was clear that she didn’t want a painful or undignified death. She wanted peace.
‘For us, it will always be a tremendous personal sadness that the current law meant that she couldn’t tell us her plan, and we couldn’t say goodbye to her.
‘But more importantly than that, that she couldn’t say goodbye at the end of her life, or be surrounded by her loved ones, which is what she would have wanted for her death.
‘Instead, the harmful status quo meant that Mum died alone, with photos of us around her.’
Ahead of the debate around 70 MPs had put their names forward to speak on the Bill.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham said he would not vote on the Bill on Friday afternoon so as not to ‘unduly influence the debate’.
But Mr Burnham has previously argued there is a more immediate need to fix palliative care and social care than debate the legalisation of assisted dying.
The previous assisted dying Bill passed its Third Reading in the Commons in June last year by a majority of 23 votes.
Ashley Dalton, a Labour former health minister, told the Commons that she herself has stage four metastatic breast cancer, which is incurable
Fellow Labour MP Claire Hazelgrove, who is in favour of the Bill, spoke publicly for the first time about her mother’s decision to bring her late-stage terminal illness to an end ‘on her terms’
Fresh polling shared with the Daily Mail revealed that the public overwhelmingly supports Mr Burnham’s view, namely that the debate about assisted dying should not come before palliative and social care are fixed.
A poll by Whitestone Insight found that 82 per cent agreed Parliament should first ensure no one would feel driven towards an assisted death because they cannot get the care and support they need at the end of life. Just 8 per cent disagreed.
It also found that 74 per cent agreed that current pressures on the NHS and social care funding could lead some people to choose to end their lives through an assisted death earlier than they would otherwise, because they fear they would not receive the care and support they need.
Nearly two-thirds agreed that money should not be taken from the NHS budget to finance assisted dying services.
The Parliament Acts mean that a Bill reintroduced to the Commons for a second time and passed by MPs in two concurrent parliamentary sessions, without amendments, can receive royal assent without peers’ approval.
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